“Nothing like putting all your eggs in one basket” The not so infinite and polluting fossil fuels accompanied by Nuclear power are old eggs in one basket, very short sighted indeed. Shame on Scotland for striving towards non reliance on these polluting fuels, for striving towards lowering our carbon footprint and aiming to sustain our lifestyles with 100% green energy. Whether we manage this within the timescale we are looking to achieve to me is not as important as leading the way and by example, influencing others, showing there is another way. The fact that we have this ‘out of sight out of mind’ way of dealing with spent uranium, burying it in tonnes of concrete until we know what to do with it, is just not good enough. Countries like Japan and Germany are now turning their backs on nuclear energy with the latest contamination in Japan making these and other countries think again. Providing energy from green sources is definately the way ahead but will take time to develop as many are still in their infancy yet to be harnessed to their full potential.

Green, renewables, harnessing the elements and what nature provides with the aim to have less or eventually no reliance on polluting dirty fossil fuels, hope I am still around in the decades to come to see this come to fuition Globally. Regarding Japan, they are backing off their commitments on climate change such is the sudden rise in consumption of fossil fuels since their nuclear lower station problems. They may have turned a couple of nuclear power stations back on rather than risk blackout but this country are far from happy about continuation of the reliance on this power. A vote put to the Italians last year threw up a 90% vote against going down the nuclear power station route, a result many other European countries I am sure would echo. Last I read on Germany they plan to phase out their nuclear power stations within the next 8-10 years.

The US amongst others have also backed off Kyoto agreement. The harsh fact is:Onshore/offshore Hydrocarbon production: Coal Oil Gas etc…is rising faster than ever, there has been no slow down due to environmental concerns, maybe just a few minor dips due to economics. Also: Production of hydrocarbons is currently not on par with exploration, new ‘commercially viable” reserves are been discovered all of the time/methods of removing oil are improving all the time which leaeds to re-visits of old reserves once thought commercially non-viable…production capacity cannot keep pace with demand, this is not because of limited reserves it is due to limited production facilities (which in turn is due to the intervention or lack of intervention by OPEC) There are massive easily accessible Iraqi reserves which will flood the market within the next 7 years…Iraq will become number 3 in OPEC once the Saudi’s let them in. Zubair area for example is one of the largest reserve in the world. Over the past 20 years or so it’s daily production capacity has been around 10% There is a lot of spin in the Oil business but basically prices are high because production is kept low, not because the big players are running out of oil. Our future as a species seems unfortunatelly be determined by economics and greed…not sense and respect for our planet.